Of course, much of that beefiness comes in video form, with the release of Double Fine Adventure! Episode 2: A Promise of Infinite Possibility. So let's not beat around the bush. On with the beef:

[vimeo]41944168[/vimeo]

Scroll down to the bottom of this update for detailed episode notes.

SLACKER BACKER UPDATE

Starting today we are allowing latecomers (let's call them "Slacker Backers") to support the project through PayPal. They will only have access to the $15 tier--the game and the development updates--while all physical rewards remain completely exclusive to you punctual types.

We think this is a good way to help the project while keeping special rewards like the t-shirt, poster, and big box one-time-only deals. To see Tim discuss this option in more depth, check out this post. And if you've got friends who want in, direct them to this handy website!

REWARDS UPDATE

We've gotten back almost all of our surveys for physical rewards. If you backed at the $100 level or above and you haven't filled yours out yet, get on it! We've placed our order for shirts and they are now in production. Just take a gander at this fine garment:

Yowza!

We're also finalizing our poster prototype, and final production should begin within a week. Hooray!

We'll start shipping all this out in the next couple of weeks, but due to the mind-boggling volume of quality merchandise we'll need to send out, we expect it to take roughly six weeks in total to get through it all. So if you backed at a physical goods level, you might see your delivery a month from now, but it might also be more in the neighborhood of about 10 weeks. The experienced folks over at Fangamer are handling fulfillment, and we trust them to get it all taken care of.

EPISODE NOTES

Here's your detailed breakdown of Episode 2. Enjoy!

00:13 - Tim’s notebook has been blurred to hide plot spoilers and his young adult romantic vampire fiction, which is a work in progress and totally shouldn't be judged yet.

00:18 - "I want to apologize to everyone for flipping them off in this shot." -Tim

07:05 - Erik Wolpaw is best known for his work on the Portal series, but before that he ran the site Old Man Murray with Chet Faliszek and contributed to the writing of Double Fine’s Psychonauts.

09:03 - Ron Gilbert circa 1990.

10:05 - Kee Chi is a project leader at Double Fine. He worked on Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Costume Quest, and Stacking. He makes tasty BBQ.

10:40 - JP LeBreton is a designer on Ron's project at Double Fine. Before the Time War he worked on the BioShock games and slew Dracula with the tooth of a sandworm.

11:00 - Back in March, design teams from around the world gathered in San Francisco for the annual Game Developers Conference. This was especially convenient for Tim as he was interested in picking as many adventure-minded brains as possible in preparation for his new game. Given how frequently Machinarium is cited as a contemporary adventure game done right, we were incredibly fortunate to have its lead designer, Jakub Dvorský, available for a face-to-face chat. Dvorský’s development studio, Amanita Design, recently released a new title called Botanicula. Lovers of adventure would do well to check it out.

11:53 - "During the interview with Erik Wolpaw it looks like I’m texting the whole time (rude!) but I was really looking up Erik’s old reviews on Old Man Murray because we were talking about them. PS. Old Man Murray is hilarious and offensive and you should check it out." -Tim

12:07 - "My wording here makes it sound like Superbrothers is two guys, but Superbrothers is one guy—Craig D. Adams. The other fellow I mention, Kris Piotrowski, is part of Capybara Games and worked on Sword & Sworcery EP, but is not part of Superbrothers. Though he is a friend of Superbrothers and would probably jump in any fight that Superbrothers got into in a bar." -Tim

12:12 - Another hot title for adventure fans, Sword and Sworcery EP recently became available for the PC. Its creators, Superbrothers and CAPY Games, were also in town for GDC and stopped by Double Fine to discuss their unique approach to the genre. Mindful not to leave Tim empty-handed, they presented him with a limited edition vinyl record and cassette tape of the game’s soundtrack by Jim Guthrie. You can order some for yourself from his Bandcamp page.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

@Tim & DoubleFine: Never give up on puzzles in an Adventure game. IMO that's one thing that really was most amazing about the old classics from LucasArts and that's where most new Adventures kinda suck at. The puzzle design was really special about these games.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Great! (And I'm intrigued by the game idea, but as Tim says, it's too soon to really have an opinion on the idea. I do like the bit about not simply going for nostalgia, but evolving and going forward without losing the good stuff.)

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Will briefly echo other people's sentiments - don't worry too much about reinventing adventure game puzzles - we enjoy them. There are bad puzzles, sure, but mostly you've managed to find a good balance in the past. Be inventive with them by all means, but we'll be happy to sit and figure stuff out for as long as it takes. I think you get that though from the way you concluded that section of the video.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I love the more mature (not adult, but mature) possibilities of the very initial germ of a story that's presented. A more mature game, but still entertaining and endearing in the same way that Psychonauts was silly and fun but at its core still very mature and dark, would be a great surprise and an interesting turn. "Coming of age" is something that hasn't really been explored in gaming to any great degree. I think that the adventure game would be a great medium to explore the concept and potentially tell something with a bit of heft behind it, and that Double Fine certainly has the chops to do such a concept justice.

Or it could just be silly and odd and wacky, and that would be a blast too.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I loved this update. Gave me a warm, happy feeling. I have full faith in your idea, Tim - two worlds worked really well for Longest Journey. Perhaps psychonauts be described as a coming of age - the characters were around that age, and Raz and Lily developed a relationship...

Regardless, I cannot wait...

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

. Now that we've seen that first sketch of the boy and girl that may become the starting screen, I've tried *click* *click* *click* clicking them to start the game, but it only pauses the video. Must... play... this... game.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

My favorite point and click adventure game is Day of the tentacle. And I think it’s because of the interaction between the three characters from the past/present/future thru the Cron-O-Jhon. So to discover that the game is going to be some kind of collaboration/interaction between two characters set in different time/places has me jumping up and down!! (ok maybe not actually «jumping», but certainly excited... mentaly excited that is).

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I agree that memrobale characters, good comady and unique universes is what makes good adventure games.

also i do pant pick up object to be used elsewhere puzzels.

as you listed things you did not like in adventure game i will mention my pet hates.

badly marked objects- when real items look like backdrop pieces.

crazy logic- like in stacking where the pigions are atracted to soup. situations and charecters and events should be crazy but logic should be pure.

two worlds,

I like this, as tim says it still has a long way to go but a charter in a fantasy world and a character in space dose sound fun. i keep asking for mutiple art styles and that would fit in too. so long as you make sure the lead characters are old enough to come up with funny lines belivibly then that should be fine as psyconauts, costumequest and stacking where all coming of age protagenists.

looks good, thanks for all the hard work guys.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

For me adventure games are fun because of the story and characters as Tim pointed out in the video. Adventure games make me feel so much more part of the story because you're like playing the things you see in cutscenes in other games. Get those cool-looking, story-driven cutscenes out of my way. THAT is what I want to play. The stories are ofter at their core pretty cliche, but because there seems to be put in much more thought about characters and situations, they often have this quirkiness that makes them much more unique than games from other genres.

The thing I like about the genre is that it's actually very much alive, but it seems to be shifting more to artsy-fartsy "experiences" which are pretty far from some of the old-school adventures. Atmosphere may be the word I'm looking for. Personally, I like the newer type a bit better, but I don't see why a "modern" interpretation of old-school adventures wouldn't be possible.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

After hearing the original pitch I want to suggest that Tim Schaefer and the team should find time to read WINTERTOWN by Stephen Emond.

It totally has the concept of dual coming of age stories or a boy and a girl living in worlds that are similar, yet totally different and how destiny and life can be steered and realizing what they can achieve both separately and together.

Maybe they don't need to read the actual book itself... just know that as a concept it's a very powerful thing to attack.

I at least am sold.

I would wonder if possibly the Space-Verse and the Fantasy Verse might have slightly different visual styles? I don't know how one would achieve that in a normal time period... but it'd be cool if either the palette or such was different.

Maybe THIS is why Oliver went for a Redbot/Mars practice run while Lee and Bagel are doing a visual style of fantasy... to discover how to merge them both.

I don't know... I'm totally rambling, sorry.

Anyways, everyone should go read WINTERTOWN I guess in the mean time if Tim's pitch excites or interests you and you like reading books. Ya know something to kill time. We need to kill time somehow.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

And yeah. The disclaimer in the first promo kickstarter video was really the point. Whether the game is fantastic, mediocre, bad, or the development explodes and nothing is produced, it doesn't matter. I bought in for the documentary and the "adventure". The game will hopefully be good, but I'm getting my money's worth right now.

Rock on.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

This concept is so cool, and like you said sharing ideas gets other people bubbling so I hope this is the right place to share back...

I would always get stuck at "that one puzzle," it might be obvious to someone else but everyone had that one puzzle that they just couldn't wrap their brains around and it brought the whole game to a dead halt. In games like DotT you can jump around to different characters to break up the stagnation but eventually you get to a point where there's just one missing piece that makes it so you can't go forward anymore.

What if you didn't have to solve every puzzle? Or rather, there's multiple solutions to some puzzles and neither one is easier, they're just different, and you only have to solve one and let go of the other? What if you could say "I need a fresh perspective" and swing over to the other character in world number 2, where they have an alternate puzzle that fills the same role but requires a different leap of logic, and being able to go back and forth between two possible solutions gets your blood flowing enough to solve just one?

It's a feat to let go of a gameplay opportunity, especially for a completionist like me. But letting go is important, it can prepare you for letting go of your emotional baggage, the puzzles of your past that can never be solved and are best left forgotten. It can prepare you for decisive actions, letting go of the promise of infinite possibility and solidifying your path. It can prepare you for letting go of each other.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

the idea of two "alternating" lines reminds me of gemini rue a bit, since that came out rather recently. i dont think it is a bad idea though, unless it is really extreme and would make the single experience a bit too short or too much work in general.

as for the puzzles...i dont know. i think i might be nostalgia ridden. i loved the response by tim about portal. i think what portal does great is that it uses a puzzle game as a setup for breaking like an in-game fourth wall that is not actually a fourth wall. i have finished botanicula recently and although i loved the graphical design, all the situations etc., there was something missing...

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Please do not get rid of the inventory system. One of my favorite parts of adventure games is getting a new item and wondering what it will do or laughing at the characters description of the item. There's a certain sense of excitement. When my friends and I would play as kids, we'd always talk about what items we found.